How Three EASE Credit Unions Use Automation to Eliminate Inefficiencies Outside the Core

SMA Technologies joined Bayport Credit Union, Commonwealth Credit Union, and Baxter Credit Union for a conversation about how outsourcing their cores to EASE enabled them to find even more ways to leverage the power of automation with OpCon.

Check out the on-demand version of this conversation below!

Short on time? For each participating credit union, we’ve highlighted one use of OpCon that’s been a gamechanger for them and one piece of advice they have for anyone considering automation.

OpCon Gamechangers

In addition to chatting about future automation aspirations at 30:22, Todd Weiss asked each member of the panel to share how OpCon has helped level up their business. Here are some of the key gamechangers the panelists noted:

“With an outsourced core and endless automation opportunities with OpCon, we now have time to work with more business units to discover what they’re still doing manually, so we can automate those processes, too, and save even more time across the organization.” (3:09)

—Matthew Lewis, Baxter Credit Union

“In one month alone, we ran 68,000 jobs with OpCon—7,000 of those were file moves. This has removed the need for constant file monitoring, which saves our employees time and ensures these processes can run automatically throughout the day, even if someone’s on vacation. If an issue pops up at any point, we receive a notification, so we can resolve it quickly.” (5:14)

—Mike Taylor, Bayport Credit Union

“We now save over 2,000 hours per year on document downloads alone with OpCon. We run a script that parses out those documents from MeridianLink into Synergy. We also use OpCon to kick of processes in SQL, send out files to third parties using FTP, upload files to the Fed, and tokenize files that are sent to and from vendors.” (9:47)

—Jessica Campassi, Commonwealth Credit Union

Automation Advice

After sharing what’s made an outsourced core and OpCon a winning duo, the panelists were asked what advice they’d give to anyone who’s interested in automation and/or OpCon. Here’s some of the guidance they offered:

“Start small with easy tasks and build from there. Ask yourself, ‘What's the thing we spend the most time on during the day?’ or ‘What’s the thing we like doing the least?’ and then automate those things first.” (25:32)

—Matthew Lewis, Baxter Credit Union

“Start with file transfers. You’ll free up the employee who’s always been designated to monitor those, so they no longer need to dial in to make sure files went out or confirm that a file transfer happened. By automating those processes, you’ll avoid so much self-correction and truly be able to operate 24/7/365.” (28:14)

—Mike Taylor, Bayport Credit Union

“Push the limits, and don’t be afraid to ask, ‘What possible?’ Whenever I’ve thought a task was too complex, OpCon has been able to facilitate it.” (26:41)

—Jessica Campassi, Commonwealth Credit Union